Validation to co-creation: How design and our users are transforming the mainframe (and us)
by Cheryl Loughlin, Kathy Pfeiffer, Bill Keller
In the organization that develops IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE mainframe computers, we’ve long prided ourselves on building strong partnerships with our users to produce excellent outcomes. This is the story of how, as part of a design-led transformation of the company, we transformed those partnerships from being about validating products to being about co-creating them.
The IBM mainframe has been around for decades. Even if you don’t know much about the mainframe, chances are you’ve seen one, perhaps without realizing it. (Early versions of mainframes are the refrigerator-like boxes in any number of movies and TV shows. Think Viola Davis and NASA in the movie Hidden Figures.) And even if you haven’t seen one, you’ve almost certainly interacted with one. Today, the mainframe is a stalwart of the global economy, powering credit card and banking transactions, airlines, insurance companies, and more.
When the IBM mainframe celebrated its 50th anniversary back in 2014, the company had already started a transformation journey led by design. As IBM designers who were here for that anniversary celebration, and have been part of the transformation, we can attest that it’s not just the mainframe that has been transformed, it’s us, and our relationship with our users.
Solving business problems by focusing on the user
Before design-led processes were widely embraced and adopted, IBM designers and engineers engaged with users through a variety of means, such as:
- User groups (SHARE)
- Design and technical conferences (Think)
- Councils, such as IBM’s z Business Leaders Council (zBLC)
- Early support programs (ESPs), through which users gain early access to and provide feedback on our newest hardware and software.
While these methods of user engagement yielded positive results (and still do), our interactions with users typically occurred at discrete points during the product development cycle. They often focused on asking users to validate something that we were already developing.
As IBM quickly scaled design’s capabilities and leadership, we introduced designers into long-established product development teams and processes. For many members of those teams, this was their first experience working with designers. Not surprisingly, there were some initial challenges. For some members of those teams, the initial perception was that design is simply about making things look good. And that using design can slow down the product development process. Design was able to demonstrate that researching, understanding, and confirming user needs before development might be the difference between success and failure. Design was able to show product teams how to connect and engage with our users in a new way: by using empathy. And design’s ability to tell the user story helped us to become a critical bridge between development and our users. Making friends with the new design kid on the block didn’t happen overnight, and some skeptics remained, but there were also eager adopters and evangelists open to seeing what possibilities lay ahead.
Transforming user engagement
Even as design built success and influence, we often found that our skills were being used to validate ideas about what we thought users wanted. This approach wasn’t allowing us to get the most out of either ourselves or our customer-partners. We knew that we wanted to shift our practice to co-creating with customers.
As we assessed our user engagement practices, we considered several aspects, including:
- Communication. Was it bi-directional? Did our users have a voice in the conversation?
- Feedback. Were we giving our users the opportunity to share their experiences with us?
- Participation. Were we making it easy for our users to engage with us and drive ideas at the earliest stages of development?
We looked at new approaches and re-imagined existing approaches.
Formalizing the sponsor user program
We added a formal sponsor user program, through which we recruit users to collaborate with us in a specific technology area, with regular interaction throughout the design, development and delivery cycle. We leveraged IBM’s framework to make it easier for our design teams and users to start, engage in, and track these long-term relationships. As the sponsor user program grew, co-creating with our sponsor users became so essential that we didn’t go a day without discussing pain points and needs as well as delightful experiences that addressed them. Keeping our users, who we got to know well, at the front of our minds was the norm. We generated big ideas together and worked towards delivering on goals, also known as Hills. Making sponsor users a part of every project drove a deeper level of engagement with our valued user community.
Bringing Enterprise Design Thinking to the design council
While our z Business Leaders Council (zBLC) provided us with the opportunity to meet with and engage users face-to-face, the format of the zBLC events, mainly product updates through presentations, left little flexibility for deeper collaboration and co-creation. As a result, IBM Design created the Z Design Council (ZDC). With the ZDC, week-long in-person meetings twice a year, and remote meetings throughout the year, focused on participation and co-creation. We introduced:
- Collaborative enterprise design thinking sessions to prioritize business problems and experiences
- Playbacks and session tracks dedicated to key IBM Z user personas (infrastructure, application, security, data and AI architects) allowing users to participate in sessions applicable to their specific interests and needs
- User-led experience sessions, where users and user panels could share their experiences with our products.
Mapping content touchpoints to deliver an engaging experience
Since content plays a critical role in the user’s experience with our products, we knew that we had to bring co-creation to the content world, too. And we needed to start with our internal teams. In some cases, the teams that develop “discovery” content (go-to-market content) are different from the teams that develop “getting started” content, and these are different from the teams creating detailed technical “use” content. As we began our transformation, these varied content creators were working independently. Without internal alignment across teams on what was being created and how and where it was being delivered, content was sometimes inconsistent, incomplete, or difficult to navigate.
To move toward co-creation across teams, content creators worked together to map out our user personas and their needs all along their end-to-end journey. We asked users to walk us through how they interacted with our products and to identify the types of content (such as text, images, or video) that they needed for each interaction. Armed with that understanding, our content teams could plan and design a complete and seamless content experience. For high profile offerings, we created what we called content solutions — comprehensive sets of content in varied formats, brought together on a single web page that provides a simplified getting started experience.
Hints and tips for co-creation
Co-creation is helping us define and develop better products. Internal alignment and collaboration with users has generated new, and often unexpected, ideas. Here are a few tips to consider if you’re looking for new approaches to co-creation:
- It takes two. Grow strong relationships with your internal teams and your users, especially if those relationships don’t exist today. Once you grow them, nurture them. While the focus of co-creation is on the user, don’t underestimate the importance of cross-collaboration across internal teams, including design, product management, development, sales, content, and marketing.
- Just ask. Don’t guess what your users want; take the time to perform research and ask them what they want. Then listen. What are their pain points? What problems are they trying to solve? Sometimes users might not be able to express or pinpoint what they want or need, but they will be able to describe what’s important to them. For example, is sustainability important? Is cost a factor? Is ease of use or simplification important because they’re hiring new talent? Understanding your users’ behaviors, needs, and motivations is critical. Knowing this information can help you generate valuable insights into their future business plans.
- It’s never too early. The sooner you can start working with your users, the better. Working with users during the concept or planning phase is optimal. If users are absent during the creation and design process, a pivot or worse yet a complete do-over can be required. Do you know of a product that was developed that no one has a use for? Or is just too hard to use? Enough said. Co-creation will help you avoid some of those pitfalls.
- Did I hear that right? Seek feedback (with internal teams and with your users) and do it often. Share your work (design of early prototypes, playbacks, visualizations, sketches, wire frames, models, usability reviews, and alpha and beta programs) and iterate. Generate discussion and confirm that your understanding is the same as your users’ understanding. We’ve all heard the saying, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Don’t wait until you think it’s perfect; we can assure you it won’t be.
Co-creation leads to success
The results of co-creation can take many forms. In the most recent release of our operating system, z/OS V2.5, these included an improved and accelerated installation process, a guided software update process, and a new editing capability through a graphical user interface.
User involvement in the design and product development process has a strong influence on a product’s success. It isn’t the only influence, but it is a significant one.
Since enterprise design thinking practices have become a part of our culture, not only do we deliver products and solutions with differentiating technical capabilities that our users need, but equally important, we deliver delightful user experiences that our users love. And we love that, too.
Cheryl Loughlin is a UX designer and design lead at IBM, Kathy Pfeiffer is a design manager at IBM, and Bill Keller is a content designer at IBM. They are all based in Poughkeepsie, New York. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
